dott, the European micro-mobility company, announces today a €20 million early stage funding round. The investment has been co-led by the EQT Ventures fund, a leading European multistage VC fund with commitments of just over €566 million, and Naspers, a global internet and entertainment group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, through its Naspers Ventures division. Other investors include Axel Springer Digital Ventures, DN Capital, Felix Capital, FJ Labs, U-Start Club and angel investors. The investment will be used to finance the launch of dott’s uniquely designed eScooters and eBikes across European cities.

Mid Europa Partners, the leading private equity investor in Central and Eastern Europe, has entered into an agreement to acquire intive S.A.from Enterprise Investors. The transaction is subject to customary competition clearance and is expected to close in Q1 2019.

In 2018, InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital arm backed six start-ups that could change the way we travel. In addition, InMotion’s incubator, Studio 107 launched its first service: Carpe for all-inclusive car subscription.

InMotion Ventures continues to invest in urban transportation, mobility and travel, but this year extended its reach to include active outdoor experiences.

techspert.io has secured £1M in second round funding for its pioneering expert-finding and evaluating technology.

iDefigo Group Ltd, which offers IoT (Internet of Things) solutions for the surveillance industry, has raised £1.5m as part of their latest round. This is the Unicorn Ascension Fund’s second deal over the course of one month. UAF has participated in this round as a co-investor with other early stage investors including Ascension Ventures, which is also one of the partners in UAF.

Eva Rez from Episode 1 gives her explores Investing in Computing Architecture in the second part of this series.

Maven Capital Partners and the Scottish Investment Bank have exited from Incremental Group Holdings Limited, delivering a 4.1x return for investors. This transaction is the second highly profitable exit for Maven investors in a week, following the sale of global telecom services provider Indigo-Belcom, which also delivered a return of more than four times the original investment.

Incremental is a market leading digital technology services business, employing 125 people across five sites in Glasgow, London, Manchester, Inverurie and Northwich. Incremental helps clients achieve digital transformation across core business applications, moving to the cloud and leveraging data and AI.

Maven Capital Partners and YFM Equity Partners have exited their investment in Indigo Telecom Group, to Growth Capital Partners, generating a return of 4.2x original cost to their respective funds. 

Maven led the management buyout of Indigo Telecom in 2016 and during the term of its investment supported the business with the strategic acquisition of Belcom247 in September 2017, together forming the enlarged Indigo-Belcom Group. Following the successful acquisition, revenues increased from £12 million to a forecast of over £30 million in the current year, with underlying profits increasing from £1.3 million to over £4 million.

South Wales based Indigo Telecom designs, installs and maintains telecom networks across the globe, enabling its clients to deliver fixed line, broadband, mobile and other data services to a wide variety of corporate, enterprise and consumer end users.

OpenLegacy, the leader in microservices-based API integration for back-end applications, has closed a funding round of $30 million. The investment will further strengthen its premier market position of enabling established enterprises to go truly digital.

Custom Materials Ltd (“Moteefe”), a social commerce platform, has recently raised funding from the Unicorn Ascension Fund (UAF). This is UAF’s first ever deal since its launch earlier this summer. UAF has participated in this round as a co-investor with other early stage investors including Ascension Ventures, Livingbridge and Force Over Mass Capital (FOMCAP). Ascension Ventures, Livingbridge and FOMCAP are existing investors in Moteefe and have raised their stake in the company during this round.

OMass Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company using structural mass spectrometry to discover novel medicines, has announced completion of a £14 million Series A financing. New investor Syncona Ltd led the round, alongside Oxford Sciences Innovation. The financing supports development of a pipeline of drug development programmes.

Mercia backed price management and optimisation company, BlackCurve, has strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of software entrepreneur Martin Fincham as Chairman and Chee Wong, the former COO of Shazam, as Technical Advisor.

This follows a £500,000 investment from Mercia Fund Managers and software entrepreneur and investor, Nick Kingsbury, earlier this year. Since raising the seed round, BlackCurve has continued to bolster its team, expand its client base and make strong progress building out its product, including key integrations with BigCommerce, Magento and Shopify.